Free Bomb Grade by Brian Freemantle Page A

in the past.’
    The fool’s worst mistake so far, isolated Silin. ‘To suggest a change would frighten them off, risk the entire deal. Does anyone want it done differently?’
    No one spoke.
    â€˜You seem to be alone, Sergei Petrovich.’ Which was how the man was going to stay from now on, thought Silin.
    â€˜Negotiations, yes,’ finally conceded the man. ‘But what about the details of the robbery itself?’
    That would leak anyway, from what he had already initiated, Silin decided. Patiently he set out how the robbery was planned but made it sound as if it had all been his idea, not that of the others.
    â€˜Brilliant!’ enthused Bobin again, when Silin finished. ‘Absolutely and totally brilliant!’
    â€˜It’s too complicated!’ protested Sobelov.
    â€˜No, it isn’t,’ refused Silin, sure of himself. ‘Complicated for other people but not for us. Because we’ll be orchestrating everything.’
    â€˜It only wants one person to break.’
    â€˜They won’t,’ said Silin. ‘They’ll die if they do. After watching their families die in front of them.’

chapter 7
    C harlie genuinely tried the new Hush Puppies, wanting his renaissance to be complete, but they hadn’t sufficiently spread and hurt like a bugger after a few practice steps around his mausoleum apartment, so he’d put them back on the stretching shoe-trees. The existing blancmange pair destroyed the attempt with the new blue striped suit and the just-unwrapped shirt and the pristine tie, but it would have been destroyed totally by his hobbling about like someone tortured by the medieval Iron Boot.
    A solicitous Thomas Bowyer greeted Charlie with a much-endangered solemn-faced enquiry about difficulty getting a taxi and Charlie resigned himself to the nonsense with the Marlboros already in mocking circulation. He’d never particularly minded people taking the piss out of him: it always put them at the disadvantage of imagined superiority.
    Bowyer said the scientific briefing was fixed for that afternoon, which gave them time to tour the embassy and make all the necessary introductions first. Very quickly Charlie realized there was no one he could remember from his earlier Moscow episode any longer stationed at the river-bordering Morisa Toreza, which was hardly surprising because Moscow was a strictly regulated, two-year term appointment.
    The tour began, obviously, at the intelligence rezidentura , which Charlie remembered but nevertheless went through the new-to-everything charade of the appropriate noises, until he got to the room Bowyer declared to be personally his. It was definitely smaller than the hutch he’d so briefly occupied at the new Embankment building and automatically Charlie looked to the window, which was spared any pigeon assault. It was covered instead with layer upon layer of Moscow street grime so thick Charlie estimated any available light was filtered by half. The dimly obscured but familiar view was of a blank wall.
    â€˜Don’t expect you’ll want to occupy it for any length of time,’ said Bowyer, in lukewarm apology. ‘Somewhere to store your stuff, really.’
    â€˜It’ll do fine,’ accepted Charlie. Its only use was what Bowyer suggested, a storeroom. But one with a difference, a place he didn’t mind inquisitive people prying into: somewhere, in fact, in which to leave lying about titbits of information he might very much want transmitted back to London.
    It was a confrontation of icy formality with the Head of Chancellery, Nigel Saxon. Charlie listened with polite assertiveness to the familiar lecture against embarrassing the embassy and at its end he dutifully reassured the grey-haired, disdainful man he had been fully briefed in London. Saxon announced he would be attending that afternoon’s scientific guidance and Charlie wondered who was going to be the greatest embassy burden,